Word has just hit that Michael Douglas, fresh from his Golden Globe win for Behind the Candelabra, will be in Edgar Wright‘s Ant-Man. He’ll be the first Ant-Man, Henry “Hank” Pym. That pegs Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, who becomes Ant-Man after stealing Pym’s tech.

Marvel confirms those details. (Variety, in a story that has since been changed, said Douglas is the villain in the film, without naming his character. That’s an interesting clash of info, but likely just an error on the trade’s part.)

Well okay then.

This morning, the members of the New York Film Critics Circle, including me, voted to expel Armond White, the former critic of the now-defunct New York Press (and currently the editor and movie critic of CityArts), from the group. To me, it was a sad moment — pathetic, really, though Armond brought it on himself. A week ago, at the Circle’s annual awards dinner, White made a rude and bellicose spectacle of himself, as he did the year before, by heckling one of the winners — in this case, Steve McQueen, the director of 12 Years a Slave, a movie that White, in his review, had dismissed as…

Iron Man 3 had the year’s biggest opening weekend and dominated the summer box office, but when the dust eventually settles on 2013, Catching Fire will go down as the year’s biggest smash. The second film in the Hunger Games franchise, based on Suzanne Collins’ book trilogy, inched past Marvel’s superhero movie on Jan. 9 and now holds the top spot with $409.4 million.

Combined with the original Hunger Games, which grossed $408.0 million in 2012, the Lionsgate films became the first franchise whose initial two installments each topped the $400 million barrier. In addition, Catching Fire has…

Here’s a lesson Hollywood might want to consider: Peter Berg’s “Battleship” cost over $200 million and took $25 million on its opening weekend. By contrast, the tough adult war thriller “Lone Survivor” cost $40 million, and almost made up its budget this weekend earning $38 million and taking the number one slot.

Shocker…

And I must apologize, somehow I’ve missed listing this film in my What to See articles. I’m blaming the holiday befuddlement.

The complicated Star Wars canon can be separated into two groups. The official, main Star Wars canon is composed of the (currently) six feature films and the animated Clone Wars series, while the expanded universe is composed of everything else — every weird book you see in the sci-fi section of Amazon, every video game, and every comic.

The canonical Star Wars universe is a mess, and now that Disney owns the franchise, the House that Mouse built has appointed a committee to sifting through that mess, and determining what the official Star Wars canon will be.

Disney, Lucasfilm, Star Wars,…

Rebel Wilson has been set to join Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan and Ricky Gervais in Night At The Museum 3, which Shawn Levy is directing from the script written by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant and David Guion and Michael Handelman for Fox. Wilson will play the night guard at the British museum where the action takes place this time around.

Remember how I put this movie on my list of movies to look forward to this year and everything? Well, YIKES! I take it all back. Ugh.

With the crowd funded Veronica Mars film coming up in about 9 weeks, I thought, what better time than now to start watching the series and getting caught up? So I looked on Netflix. But Veronica Mars was not available. So I looked on Hulu, but Veronica Mars was also not available there either. My options seemed to be that either I could buy the episodes on iTunes at $2.99 each, or I could buy them on Amazon for $2.99 each — after which I would be completely broke. There are 64 episodes, 64 times $2.99 is $191.36. Good golly that’s not going to happen.

I do want to stop and reflect for a…

Nothing should be taken as confirmed news unless explicitly stated as such,” so let’s keep that in mind as we dive in to what the man’s got to say:

• Martian Manhunter and Aquaman will not appear in the film.
• He thinks we’re going to see the first official still of Affleck in costume really soon.
• Superman/Clark Kent will unequivocally be the main character of Batman vs Superman, meaning this will not be some covert Justice League movie.
• Lex Luthor will be in the movie, but he will not be the only villain. Jett refuses to reveal the second one, only stating that this other character is…

Such shocking news we have here. Who would have guessed that Marvel, now owned by Disney, would be granted the exclusive publishing rights to Star Wars Comics, Star Wars being a Lucasfilm property, Lucasfilm now owned by Disney. Just shocking I tell you.

Here’s the full press release.

The Walt Disney Company’s Lucasfilm Ltd. and Marvel Entertainment are joining forces to bring new Star Wars adventures to readers across the galaxy, with Marvel granted exclusive rights to create and publish Star Wars comics and graphic novels beginning in 2015.

The agreement marks a homecoming for the Star…